VMworld 2012 Announcements – Part I

VMworld 2012 is underway in San Francisco. Once again, a record number of attendees is expected to gather at the Moscone Center to see what VMware and their partners are announcing. From a VMware perspective, there is plenty.

Given the sheer quantity of announcements, I’m actually going to break up them up into a few parts, this post being Part I. Let’s start with the release of vSphere 5.1 and some of its notable features.

Enhanced vMotion – the ability to now perform a vMotion as well as a Storage vMotion simultaneously. In addition, this becomes an enabler to perform vMotion without the shared storage requirement. Enhanced vMotion means we are able to migrate a virtual machine stored on local host storage, to shared storage, and then to local storage again. Or perhaps migrate virtual machines from one host to another with each having their own locally attached storage only. Updated 9/5/12 The phrase “Enhanced vMotion” should be correctly read as “vMotion that has been enhanced”. “Enhanced vMotion” is not an actual feature, product, or separate license. It is an improvement over the previous vMotion technology and included wherever vMotion is bundled.

Enhanced vMotion Requirements:

Hosts must be managed by same vCenter Server

Hosts must be part of same Datacenter

Hosts must be on the same layer-2 network (and same switch if VDS is used)

Operational Considerations:

Enhanced vMotion is a manual process

DRS and SDRS automation do not leverage enhanced vMotion

Max of two (2) concurrent Enhanced vMotions per host

Enhanced vMotions count against concurrent limitations for both vMotion and Storage vMotion

Enhanced vMotion will leverage multi-NIC when available

Next Generation vSphere Client a.k.a. vSphere Web Client – An enhanced version of the vSphere Web Client which has already been available in vSphere 5.0. As of vSphere 5.1, the vSphere Web Client becomes the defacto standard client for managing the vSphere virtualized datacenter. Going forward, single sign-on infrastructure management will converge into a unified interface which any administrator can appreciate. vSphere 5.1 will be the last platform to include the legacy vSphere client. Although you may use this client day to day while gradually easing into the Web Client, understand that all future development from VMware and its partners now go into the Web Client. Plug-ins currently used today will generally still function with the legacy client (with support from their respective vendors) but they’ll need to be completely re-written vCenter Server side for the Web Client. Aside from the unified interface, the architecture of the Web Client has scaling advantages as well. As VMware adds bolt-on application functionality to the client, VMware partners will now have the ability to to bring their own custom objects objects into the Web Client thereby extending that single pane of glass management to other integrations in the ecosystem.

Here is a look at that vSphere Web Client architecture:

Requirements:

Internet Explorer / FireFox / Chrome

others (Safari, etc.) are possible, but will lack VM console access

A look at the vSphere Web Client interface and its key management areas:

Where the legacy vSphere Client fall short and now the vSphere Web Client solves these issues:

Single Platform Support (Windows)

vSphere Web Client is Platform Agnostic

Scalability Limits

Built to handle thousands of objects

White Screen of Death

Performance

Inconsistent look and feel across VMware solutions

Extensibility

Workflow Lock

Pause current task and continue later right where you left off (this one is cool!)

Browser Behavior

Upgrades

Upgrade a Single serverside component

vCloud Director 5.1

In the recent past, VMware aligned common application and platform releases to ease issues that commonly occurred with compatibility. vCloud Director, the cornerstone of the vCloud Suite, is obviously the cornerstone in how VMware will deliver infrastructure, applications, and *aaS now and into the future. So what’s new in vCloud Director 5.1? First an overview of the vCloud Suite: